The Home for Wayward Supermodels by Pamela Redmond Satran Page A

through the lobby. I even managed to push through the crowd in Times Square and head down into the subway station without grabbing any strangers and shouting my amazing news. But when a train roared into the station and I knew no one could hear me, I let myself scream at the top of my lungs from the sheer thrill of it.
    Me, in Vogue magazine. If it hadn’t been for the sound of the train, they might have heard me all the way in Wisconsin.

    The first person I saw when I walked into the loft where the Vogue shoot was taking place was Alex Pradels. That’s right, Alex, the snobby photographer who’d taken my picture.
    When he saw me, his face broke into a smile and he stood up.
    “You owe me a big kiss,” he said.
    “Really?” The nerve of this man!
    “I’m the one who got you this job,” he continued, still maddeningly calm.
    I frowned. “What are you talking about?”
    “When your roommate Tatiana didn’t show up for her fitting and they fired her, I recommended you.”
    “Wow,” I said. “You did?”
    “You are a star, my dear,” he said, zooming in as if to kiss me.
    I leaped back in alarm. “Thank you,” I said, rubbing my cheek as if he’d slapped it rather than simply aimed his lips in its direction. “I better get to work.”
    “Work,” for me at least, involved sitting around letting people fix me up. Now I know what a painter’s canvas feels like, I thought, as my face was painted and powdered, as my hair was brushed and teased. It was like it had been for the test shots the other day times ten—more people, more time, more tension, more excitement.
    We were shooting in a loft as big as Tom’s uncle’s hay barn, looking over the Hudson River and all of New York Harbor. I kept trying to breathe deeply while focusing on the Statue of Liberty in order to calm my nerves, but my brain kept ping-ponging off in crazy directions. The statue itself, for instance, made me think of France and my real father. Then that made me think of Mom and how far away she was. I’d try to turn my attention to the sailboats that dotted the harbor, but that only reminded me of Tom.
    So instead of looking out the window I turned my attention to the loft. It was so beautiful, like no place I’d ever seen before, with all white furniture and huge paintings on the wall and enormous bouquets of white roses in shining glass globes. If you lived in this place, I imagined, you would never have an excuse to worry about anything, and imagining a life like that made me feel tranquil as everyone poked and prodded me and bustled around me.
    Just when we were finally ready to shoot, the caterers arrived and set up lunch along the endless expanse of black countertop in the kitchen. There was more food than I’d seen anywhere outside the Fireman’s Picnic—dishes unlike any I’d seen before coming to New York: plates of sushi as wide as the tires on Tom’s truck, a mountain of vegetables as tall as Mom’s Thanksgiving turkey, a salad like a pile of fall leaves just after raking, plus muffins and pies and cookies and candy that everybody ignored.
    I imagined how much my mom would enjoy this spread, and then had to work to push her out of my mind so I didn’t start feeling too sad. Now that I wasn’t with her, I realized how often I thought about her, how many things—like, practically everything—reminded me of her.
    Just think about what you’re going to have for lunch, I counseled myself. But I suddenly felt self-conscious about eating with all these people standing around. Instead of filling my plate, I decided, I would only eat the one thing on the table I really wanted: the candy.
    When I thought everyone was too busy with their sushi and their salad to notice, I slipped one of the dark chocolate balls from the pile and popped it in my mouth. But as I chewed, I saw that everyone was looking at me.
    “These are really good,” I said, figuring an explanation was called for.
    They all kept staring until Yuki,